Clowney with Season Ending Injury (microfracture surgery, out 9 months)

Yeah, of course the one guy that turns out worthy of the #1 pick we choose, is no longer playing for us lol

 

I don't think it is fair to call Clowney a bust because of a knee injury. I don't think Oden was a bust. I think a bust is someone who doesn't play up to expectations, not someone whose career was derailed by injury.

Having said that, I was never comfortable with the Clowney pick because of the health and motor issues in his past. I wanted them to either trade down and get Mack or just tack Mack first if there were no takers. But I wasn't upset or anything we the pick and assumed he was worth the risk. Still may be.

I do blame the Texans for drafting two health risks out of their first three picks for a team that just went 2-14. I also blame the Texans for mishandling his knee. Whether it was pre-existing or happened with the meniscus tear - they now claim to have seen it during the scope and they should have done something or at the least made it completely clear to Clowney and the public what was going on. Instead they tried to hope that they would get lucky and he would be able to play and they wouldn't be criticized for drafting an injury risk.

But they should have known they were being dumb because of his history. Questions regarding previous injuries and his willingness to play (whether still injured or hurt), multiple issues throughout the body, etc. I really think injury recovery and/or prevention should be considered a skill for an athlete along the lines of strength and lateral quickness. Guys who have recurring major and/or minor nagging issues before the pros should be graded lower on body health score. And, of course, once one thing is an issue for more Han a couple of weeks or months,then other things start getting messed up as the body is out of balance. I hope Clowney recovers and is productive for some of his contract but right now it is looking bad and best case scenario is that he contributes a little later next season.

The Texasn, not Clowney, come out of this with the character knock. 12 weeks or so to inform the public of a major knee issue for the first overall pick remains unbelievable and offensive. Or incompetent. Now they get to hope for something great in the 10-18 draft pick range. Hope to luck into another Watt, I guess?

 

This is NOT good!!!

 

so it's official that b.o.b had nothing to do with the selections we made rounds 1-5?


this really sucks for clowney and us as fans. he was not my choice, I wanted to trade pick up a dt and little carr later on. once we chose clowney, i wanted him to succeed and be a force. it seems like many in the media are just wanting to chant out, " i told you so". with romeo and a qb whisperer, just like wade and kubiak, don't kid yourself and pretend we're not going to choose a defensive player in the 1st round.

 

Hey, Clowney still played more games in a Texans uniform than Tony Baselli!

 

The prognosis is 9 months.

Does anyone really believe he'll be back in 9 months?

I wouldn't be surprised if he's hurt the entire '15.

 

It's not fair to call Clowney a bust. But this validates even more that our FO either researches incorrectly or just does not research at all. Ignorant regardless.

 

This is why I don't expect to see him back on the field before 2016 at the earliest. This may sound a bit harsh but by then, Clowney will be 4 years removed from his standout junior season which was the basis for his being considered the best player in the draft. He may come back, he may not and the odds certainly aren't in his favor but them's the breaks. The conversation about him being a diva was/is a false issue. In fact I am listening to Pancakes on Sportsradio 610 right now and he and the other talking heads are parroting the company line on that very issue. You can expect to hear a lot of this going forward in an attempt to change the narrative by the Texans.

The real issue that needs to be discussed here is why the Texans have twice had the top pick in the entire draft and managed to come away with butkus to show for it. Something is fundamentally wrong with the talent evaluation process over on Kirby drive. No matter how much lipstick and makeup they put on this 2014 "pig" draft, this was a wasted year and that is something from which they may not recover. Waiting for the Texans' spin machine to go into full effect in three...two...one...

 

what else can you say? Even if/when he returns the fact that he is a guy who depended almost solely on his speed and explosiveness does not leave a lot of room for optimism.

 

Almost every team in the league would have taken Clowney with the first pick. Let's not act like this was some 'reach' by the Texans.

Anyhoo, this really blows chimps. I'm not sure who I should be mad at, if anyone.

Did the Texans try to rush him back too soon? Can someone without an ax to grind (and who isn't on my ignore list) answer this question?

 

Nah, didn't rush him back too soon...problem was that his first surgery didn't solve the entire problem, just half of it. He could have rested for a year and still had issues.

This totally blows. There isn't really anyone to blame here. However, Clowney had a lot of red flags...there was a reason we weren't blown away by any trade down deals, because teams were dying to get up to the top spot.

Really crappy situation for the Texans...these last two drafts have been absolutely brutal and it's very hard for any team to find any sort of consistent success when you draft guys that don't contribute.

 

I've tried to avoid contributing to the Texans threads this season after noticing the general level of discourse in them. But, I feel like there are some... cooler heads in the thread right now.

I think there's equal blame to go around and it's a pretty strong indictment of everybody. McNair should be embarrassed by the playing surface when multiple teams have called out NRG as an unsafe field. If the locking mechanisms or patchy grass(due to indirect sunlight) had any hand in Clowney's injury, Ol' Bob should've immediately spent the money on a new field.

I think O'Brien also played a part by not disclosing what was happening with Clowney's timetable and being deliberately terse with the media. Reporters lap up Belichick's schtick because he's been doing it for so long. When one of his disciples does it, it seems like they're playing a role. Perhaps O'Brien felt pressure from the organization to get the #1 overall pick some playing time this season and rushed him back too soon. Even if that's the case, it's not like he'd tell us.

I think Rick Smith and the medical staff shoulder much of the blame, especially for taking two potential injury risks with their top 3 picks. There were reports that Clowney was hurt throughout his senior season and the Texans' attempted shopping of the pick shows they weren't 100% sold on him. But, it is agreed that Clowney's potential was too much to pass up and the Texans took a chance on it. It now seems like that swing was a miss. However, their inability to properly diagnose the knee this season and their poor history in mid- to -late-round drafting really sets the franchise back. We've never had depth and that starts with the poor drafting.

 

Apparently Dr James Andrews REFUSED to do the surgery. Clowney's career is done.

 

Not so. It has been reported that at least 5 teams didn't have him at the top of their draft board. This argument smacks me as more of an excuse than anything because I suspect that Clowney was damaged goods when they made the pick. It becomes a question of what they knew and when they knew it (shades of Watergate!).

Agree. It blows chimps on steroids. Also, I think the Texans mishandled this episode from the git go. They make it this pick based primarily on what he did two years ago as he certainly didn't show much during his senior year. When you draft a guy 1st overall, he HAS to produce and Clowney was unable to do so from the start because of injury. THEN, they (Texans) make it look like Clowney has "motivation" issues with that "Clowney is a diva" rumor that "leaked " into the blogosphere. We now see that the team should have shut him down in Sept yet chose instead to have him play 3 games on a bad knee which brings us to the current state of suck: Our top pick in the whole frickin' draft is lost for this year and quite possibly the next. Again, it becomes a question of what they knew and when they knew it. My guess is that they (Rick Smith & Co.) will try to CTA (cover their a**es) by throwing the medical staff under the bus here but I simply don't buy that story at all. I have far more faith in the doctors than I do in the Texans' front office right now.

 

We appear to be on the same page here. The real issue here is their taking two potential injury risks with their top 3 picks. This does nothing to advance the state of the franchise at all which is supposed to be the objective of this organization. Now what will be interesting to see is if heads roll during the off season over this situation. At the very least Smith and Co should be shown the door and a total evaluation of their medical staff is in order. Will Uncle Bob do it? Stay tuned...

 

I would like to see the kid come back with even more explosiveness.

 

At least 5 teams didn't, but that means that about 27 did. 27 out of 32 teams qualifies as "almost every team" in my book. I'd like to think that if they thought he was damaged goods, they wouldn't have drafted him. The Texans have never been afraid to go against the grain with a high draft pick (Mario instead of Bush).

Just to be clear, I am not absolving the Texans of all of this. I'm not a Rick Smith fan at ALL. I'm just trying not to automatically assume that everything is the Texans fault like so many here seem to constantly do.

LOL. Do you mind if I add this to my repertoire?

 

Maybe the Texans should look into knee transplant surgery?

 

This can happen. I watched Rookie of the Year.

 

This is essentially the history of the Texans.